Out of this historic and traditional connection, the Jews in every generation strove to return and take hold of their ancient homeland.

מִתּוֹךְ‏ mi-toch "out of" (see here comment for more information about תוך and related expressions) in this context can be translated as "Driven by [the connection]".

מָסָרְתִּי‏ masorti "traditional" stems from מָסרֶׁת‏ masoret "tradition". The second kamatz in מָסָרְתִּי, being in a closed syllable, is kamatz katan, pronounced as o, and in vowelless writing is reflected with a ו‏ vav.

מוֹלַדְתָּם‏ molad(e)tam "their homeland" is a form of מוֹלֶדֶת‏ moledet "homeland", which has a root יל״ד and is related to the words such as יֶלֶד‏ yeled "boy", נוֹלַד nolad "was born" and יוֹם הֻלֶּדֶת‏ ~ יום הולדת yom huledet "birthday".

מַעְפִּילִים‏ ma'apilim is the plural masculine participle form of לְהַעְפִּיל leha'apil "to climb, to ascend", and in this case is used as a noun, literally "climbers". This refers to those who immigrated, largely fleeing from the Nazi persecution, to the Land of Israel, then part of the British Mandate of Palestine, in violation of the British colonial restrictions.

The whole clandestine immigration movement of that time was correspondingly called הַעְפָּלָה‏ ha'apala, literally "ascension", or עֲלִיָּה בֵּי״ת‏ ~ עלייה ב׳ aliya bet "Aliyah B" (see the Wikipedia page to read more about it).

מְגִנִּים‏ meginim (singular: מֵגֵן‏ megen) is the participle of the verb לְהָגֵן lehagen "to defend", again used as a noun: "defenders". An identically spelled and closely related word is מָגֵן‏ magen "shield", as in מָגֵן דָּוִד‏ magen David "shield of David, star of David".

Note also that the word נְשַׁמּוֹת‏ neshamot "deserts", with the root
שמ״ם
"to devastate, to destroy", is unrelated to the identically spelled and, in modern Hebrew, identically pronounced word נְשָׁמוֹת‏ neshamot "souls", with the root
נש״ם
"to breathe".